


Forbearance

by Enolu



Series: Stay like this; stay with me [10]
Category: Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny
Genre: A Woman’s Body, Anger Management, Breastfeeding, Caring, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Friendship, French Kissing, Frustration, Hormones, Isolation, Lactation, Lactation Kink, Love Confessions, Making Love, Marriage, Married Couple, Mildly Dubious Consent, Milking, Nausea, Nipple Play, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Non-maternal, Nursing Kink, Oral Sex, Passive-aggression, Politics, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-War, Power Dynamics, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Kink, Pregnant Sex, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Sexual Tension, Sexual Violence, Slice of Life, Submission, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Vaginal Fingering, Women In Power, fear of the future, implied threats, maternity, memories of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enolu/pseuds/Enolu
Summary: But Athrun isn’t a woman, she thinks, and he’ll never face the constant refrain of the body fighting against itself.
Relationships: Cagalli Yula Athha/Athrun Zala
Series: Stay like this; stay with me [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735528
Comments: 27
Kudos: 26





	Forbearance

It’s a small mercy that there’s been no leak to the press yet. Outside these cool, blue-grey walls, there’s always a chance that the members of staff could loosen their lips in breach of their non-disclosure agreements. It would take almost no effort when the other emirs’ sections of the office compounds are so nearby.

One can never be fully certain, even if the staff of the Atha house have proven trustworthy for now. But a little decorum and a gentle reminder, as Mina had suggested, would go a long way.

With that advice in mind, Cagalli had forced herself to the office, even if she would have preferred staying in the manor, uncombed hair bunched in a band, ensemble complete with tank top and sweatpants.

Her members of staff bow slightly when addressed, never breaking protocol. Aide, second aide, personal assistant, private secretary, clerk, public relations advisor, wardrobe advisor, security officer, household officer, so on and so forth, all dressed in their standard suits, assigned from the different departments of the Orb Noble Families Household Trust.

With her painted face and a leather belt to cinch what’s left of her waist, she hopes that nobody will know that she spent last week regurgitating most of her meals. This morning, she hides the little hells of her stiff back, sore shoulders and those awful, swollen ankles with a cream cardigan, long teal dress and formal shoes that make no sound on the embossed navy carpet. Her wardrobe advisor chose well.

“Thank you for all the effort, Shizuru. I look forward to your continued support when I return.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Please take care and return safely.”

She doesn’t know if she’ll see a different clerk a few months from now, since there’s a high chance that some of the longer-serving members of staff will have been reassigned by her return. The Trust and the emirs’ office administrators know better than to have all of the staff serve permanently with a single noble family, quite apart from the rotations being beneficial for the staff's professional development.

As it is, Cagalli’s given them plenty reason to rotate her more senior members of staff out of their service to her. It’s a pity that her staff might be assigned to different emir offices because of her actions, but she can’t afford to regret it these days.

She moves down the line, extending her hand to the next member of staff. “Thank you, Rikyo. I appreciate all the help.”

“I’m pleased to assist Your Grace. I wish Your Grace the best of health and a smooth delivery.” Her household officer is always so earnest, and his youth is so apparent when he subconsciously bounces on his heels to bow. He hands her the large bouquet of pink flowers, looking anxious. “We chose dahlias, Your Grace, they’re scentless.”

“That’s so thoughtful. They’re beautiful, and they’ll brighten the house. Thank you all very much.” Her staff collectively mumur their welcome, and she makes a show of admiring the tightly-clustered petals. She forces her smile to persist, even as a wave of discomfort creeps into her neck and face, her chest aching more than she’d been prepared for.

Rikyo had been among the first to realise what was going on early enough, since she kept breaking mid-sentence to rush to some bathroom. Then the headaches, sweating and nausea had worsened, and so she’d started working from her home after two months of struggling back and forth to the office. The rest of the staff must have realised it after that, but nonetheless feigned surprise when the formal statement was issued in her third month, bless them.

At last, Cagalli reaches the last in the line of her fifteen members of staff. Even if the days when she’d treated staff like Kisaka and Mana as family are truly over, she’s had no choice but to entrust her principal aide with some of her private matters.

"Thank you for all the hard work, Daniele." She holds his hand longer than the others'. "You've been invaluable, and I regret that I won't be able to send you off during my leave of absence. If there's anything that I can help with, you need only ask."

"I'm glad to be of service, Your Grace. May health abound." He smiles and bows, and she can't see his expression for those few seconds. When he straightens, he says, "Your Grace should trust that my incoming replacement will be thoroughly briefed on what Your Grace expects in the household. I shall ensure it personally."

"You have my confidence and gratitude, Daniele."

It's not a lie. Outside her decisions concerning her work, Daniele Ito never shows any inkling of what he thinks. The day that she had first spoken to Daniele and her public relations advisor of her engagement, Varia had involuntarily gasped and sputtered to hide her incredulity. Daniele, however, had simply offered his congratulations and started jotting down some notes.

Looking back, Varia’s reaction had served as a fairly accurate foretelling of the general public reaction. Nothing - no amount of planning, statements from Varia, the Trust, or even the few wedding details that Cagalli had eventually and grudgingly provided - could have prevented the storm of public opinion in Orb and outside the Union territory.

To be fair, Varia had later been far more enthusiastic of Cagalli informing of the expectancy. Varia had been almost dementedly motivated about the announcements that would have to follow.

"Everyone loves babies. Regardless of whoever." Varia had declared, prattling on at length about seizing the opportunity given the "recent circumstances". She wasn’t wrong, since conception had become even more glorified in the cosmic era of convenient technology and free-falling natural birth rates. Of course Varia, the opportunistic, consummate public relations master that she was, put together a statement that impressed even Mina.

Then Cagalli had dropped another bombshell. Poor Varia.

Daniele, unfazed as ever, had not reacted any more than he had all those years ago when Cagalli asked that all records of visitors to the Atha estate be erased regularly. No questions asked. It's always been Daniele's brand of professionalism, as her primary aide. Nine years in, and it's still business as usual today.

He helped hush up that matter with Etienne. She glances quickly at Mina, who stands at the side, lipstick freshly-applied, watching with her hawk eyes. But Mina already knows. Mina’s made a request to the chief director of the Trust for Daniele's services to be assigned to the Sahaku household, if only to keep Daniele from possibly being rotated into the Rutherford office.

While Mina is far pickier about her members of staff, Cagalli's suffered a reputation of being a demanding employer. It's the way it is, being the lead emir.

X

Mina is all prim, sharp smiles when Cagalli briefs her privately on the pending matters. She wears her point-cut stilettos in the sitting room, her nails perfectly done, writing notes in her elegant hand.

From time to time, she sips the coffee that Cagalli can’t have, and she casts a critical eye on Cagalli's swollen ankles and now bare feet. Really, it’s fortunate that Cagalli had the automatons clean up the more visible parts of the house and remove the incriminating trail of draft statements, unwashed clothing, half-finished food and drink before Mina’s arrival.

A part of Cagalli wonders why she couldn't be like Mina - to want no friend, lover or family, and to live only for herself. It's almost envy-inducing, especially with last week’s experience of kneeling over the toilet. In the earlier months, Dr. Pitagawa had told her it would probably go away, but maybe she lied to make Cagalli feel better.

"Thank you, Mina." Cagalli says finally, when she's crossed off the last matter. "I appreciate that this is another significant favour that I ask of you. It’s just that I can’t possibly trust anybody else."

"You're quite correct." Mina tells her, with just a hint of icyness. She recrosses her legs, entirely self-possessed. "Etienne Rutherford would have most certainly refused. Frankly, I'm surprised that he's still holding on as emir of the Rutherford house, instead of returning it over to his brother. But no matter, I’m clear on what your position is, and I'll manage any arguments that he and Clyde Moringa make, if they even bother at the next sitting. Anyway, I believe they'll take the same position as you for the trade reforms."

"I have only myself to blame about Etienne."

His face swims in her mind, pale with barely-concealed anger, blue eyes blackened with hate and his jaw tightened. She had seen him plenty of times before and after, but nothing would ever drown out that memory.

“A man like him will recover in no time at all - men are such proud idiots, they have no choice but to in these kinds of situations. You've seen his statement and congratulations, haven't you?"

Cagalli nods. His public relations advisor had ensured an appropriate level of graciousness.

"He's professional enough. He's no fool either; he won't let it be known that you went behind his back when he was planning to propose. You have other things to concern yourself with, anyway."

Cagalli tentatively reaches a hand to Mina's, breathing a sigh that she hadn't realised she was holding when Mina squeezes her hand back. "Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me for anything, Mina."

"You say that now, but when the baby tears you apart, you won't want me calling to discuss what you think of the Prime Minister's latest defence budget." Those arched, dark eyebrows are what makes Mina so rakish, even if she's indisputably one of the most stunning women that Cagalli has ever known.

"Still, if there's anything you think of, I'm still available to address any concern. The shuttle is fully connected, as you know. I'll be contactable for a while yet."

"I doubt, my dear. I expect that Athrun Zala will be calling you the whole way until he gets there himself. I won't even have a chance to get you on the line." Mina sneers and adjusts her blouse just so. "I've seen how he looks at you, especially now that you're carrying his child. It's a wonder that he agreed to let you seal this house and leave Orb at all."

_ She still hasn't forgiven me either. _

"Still, I'm very sure that under your care, things will carry on smoothly. The Trust will maintain the Atha estate in these months, and manage the usual administrative matters."

Her mentor's gaze is still sceptical. "But are you certain that you should deliver outside Orb? It's not too late to change your mind.”

"We agreed quite early on that I'd deliver outside Orb. It's been..." To her horror, Cagalli hears her own voice catching, and the word doesn't come. She blinks.

"Trying?"

She gathers herself, pushing the thoughts of the ugly reports and critics out of her mind. "Challenging."

"Ah, but you've come such a long way." Mina lifts her chin with an almost maternal pride. "The lead emir indeed.”

"Only with your guidance, Mina. Even now, my going away wouldn't be possible without you." She means it. Maybe it's the hormones, but a lump crawls its way up her throat, and Mina doesn't let go of her hand, patting it fondly.

"The credit was always yours for choosing to come back and claim your place after the war. You and I know that your father did you no favours by hiding you away from the public and not training you to step into the emir’s role more. And putting his confidence in the Seirans for so long? It’s a pity, even if he thought he was protecting you.”

“He just wanted me to live as normally as possible.” The thought of her father surfaces, and she has to blink again. “I guess he didn’t want to foist the duty of being an emir on me. He thought he could trust the Seiran house - he always told me he entrusted me to them if anything should happen to him.”

“A lesson learned late is better than a lesson never learnt. Frankly, I was only convinced to come out of my retirement because you stood there and insisted. Such a determined, brazen girl. I was so proud when you showed them all your worth.” Suddenly, Mina’s tone is stinging. “And yet, here we are, with your Admiral."

It’s as if all the mornings of nausea and that constant trepidation amidst her daily routine has reasserted itself into the air. Cagalli looks at her, quite miserable. "I'm sorry, Mina. I really am. But I want a future with him. I tried to leave and to let him leave. But he stayed. He never forced my hand, and he asked for so little."

Hardly mollified, Mina lets go of her hand as if it were a spider.

"Little? He could have stayed in the background; stayed out of it by never asking anything at all! But what has he done? Little, indeed! Would you listen to yourself!" Mina's eyes flash garnet. She gestures with a sweeping hand, to Cagalli's unmistakeably swollen belly. "If you were going to cement your legitimacy as an Orb noble with marriage and a child, shouldn't you have chosen more wisely? Look at you!"

"I want this." Her obstinance makes her raise her voice, despite Mina’s rage. "I want to do this - for him, and for myself.”

Mina sighs, but her anger dissipates as visibly as it had shown itself. “I didn't mean to lash out. We’ve gone through this, too many times. I still endeavour to accept it, even now."

"I just don't want us to hide forever."

“You do what you must. For everything that I've encouraged or cautioned of you, I just hope that you'll be happy."

Still, the resentment steals into Mina’s flawless face. "He should know that he stole you away from me. And you’ll always be bound to him now. We could have done without anyone else, without anyone to hold us down. You were my true protégée."

"Thank you. For everything." It's all that Cagalli can say. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”

Then Mina embraces her, in an uncharacteristically tender gesture. She lets go quickly, however, and stands, stretching to her exceptional height with the instinctive grace that Cagalli envies more than ever. Mina's white silk blouse is only slightly wrinkled, whereas Cagalli feels and probably looks like a balled-up, crumpled rag.

Seemingly oblivious to Cagalli's emotions and the tears that are hastily wiped away, Mina moves about the drawing room. She has a manner of sweeping about, standing by the grand piano that Cagalli only keeps around in memory of her father and for the rare occasions when Athrun can be convinced to play something. The room is larger than necessary, but as large and grand as it was originally designed to impress, the center of the Atha estate.

Mina inspects everything although she's seen it all before, with that uncanny way of acting like she owns everything. She surveys the freshly-wiped mantle piece, and maybe she’s guessed that when Athrun left for the Antarctic testing, Cagalli hadn’t bothered even getting the automatons to tidy up on a daily basis. It’s strange that Mina and Athrun don’t seem to recognise their similarities.

Mina says, "I would have expected Athrun Zala to accompany you, instead of letting you go and stay there alone.”

"He will, soon. It just that he’s too pressed for time. The flight schedules and handover processes for his duties were more tedious than we'd planned for.” Cagalli had convinced him that she would be fine with her entire suite of bodyguards on the shuttle.

Mina’s tone turns waspish again. “We’re all pressed for time, you know.” Her eyes narrow. “He certainly wasn’t too busy when he put a baby in you.”

She ignores the snipe. “It just didn't make sense for me to wait until he finished his missions and to fly back here, just for us to fly out again to Vanuatu. I wanted to go as soon as possible - I don’t like the idea of the top military brass granting him exceptional leave to accompany me, just because of status.”

"Regardless, he's probably fretting about not being able to escort you both to that hideaway of his. Or yours, both, I suppose. I always forget that marriage blurs those lines. Yours, mine, ours."

There’s no pleasing Mina. Had Athrun somehow managed to take special leave to forgo the missions, Mina would have mocked him for being overly-suspicious and possessive.

Somehow, it makes Cagalli laugh. She's as used to Mina's barbs and casual goading as much as Athrun despises it. No matter how generous Rondo Mina Sahaku can be, she's harsh, judgemental, suspicious of nearly everyone, and she rarely forgives.

Someone like Athrun, on the other hand, with his classical manners and genteel ways, would of course be bewildered by Mina’s imperious ways and constant sarcasm. He probably thinks of Mina as an embittered, twisted woman, even if Cagalli’s quite sure that he admires Mina.

It's been some time since their formal, if inevitable introduction, but they still don’t agree on much, except that a baby girl would be preferable. It’s a pity.

"Your public relations advisor certainly has her work cut out for her. I suppose it's very much your style - the sneaking around, the secret wedding, the secret homes, and now delivering outside Orb.”

Cagalli’s jaw sets. "I don’t want to emerge from any hospital with people photographing and recording and asking me whether the child would be considered an Orb noble or not. I don’t know anyway - it’s for the constitutional legal advisors to declare.”  _It would be better if the baby wasn’t considered an Orb noble._

“Those fogies are probably waiting to see if child is healthy or not. You know they can read those ancient Constitutional provisions on nobles' successions with almost any spin, especially when the noble families are already dying out these days.” Mina’s teeth peek beneath her ruby smile. "You take after your father, I suppose, guarding your privacy like it’s gold. Won’t you tell me if it’s a girl or boy?”

“We decided to leave it - it’ll be a surprise.” She hadn’t wanted to know during the last scan, for some strange reason, and perhaps Athrun thought it was in vogue or something, for he had indulged her. “The doctor says all is well, anyway. I just hope I don’t disappoint you both if it’s not a girl.”

Mina stands from the piano, returning to sit and sweep Cagalli up in another embrace that probably exhausts Mina's annual quota for physical contact. "I only hope for a girl because of her mother, my dear. I’ll miss you very much.”

"I’ll miss you too. I'll be back soon, it won’t even be half a year." Cagalli smiles at her mentor, fighting back those darned tears again.  _ Maybe I can never come back. Not as I am, now. _

It's impossible, but the room somehow looks emptier than when she'd first returned to this house after her father's death.

X

The house in Vanuatu is secure by design and Athrun's arrangements. He'd nonetheless insisted that she have all the guards at her disposal make the trip and stay at least until he arrived.

It makes a strange sight when she recalls the secluded area that had lacked neighbours for at least a mile. With all the final checks and procedures, the ten guards and the additional security automatons seem to crowd out the clean white planes of the villa. It takes some time before she’s given a green light to leave the landed shuttle, but it’s probably for the best.

She leaves a message for him, although he’s unlikely to read it any time soon when he’s in the middle of a sortie.

Then Dr. Pitagawa arrives as scheduled, motherly with her warm hands and smiling eyes. Cagalli had protested the arrangements at first, but Athrun insisted, if only for ease of mind and an abundance of caution.

It's what they live with now, she thinks, more than ever. An abundance of caution.

"Don’t hesitate to call at any time, before the next check-up, Your Grace." Dr. Pitagawa assures, when it's over. She peers kindly at Cagalli, helping Cagalli to sit up on the bed. "I am just a ten minutes' drive away."

"I'll do my best not to trouble you." Cagalli promises. Her hips are tight, her chest is twinging and her other joints are so sore, but she really means it.

"It won’t be any trouble at all. After all, Your Grace is my only client until the baby arrives.”

She swallows her discomfort. “But is everything fine for you?”

“Absolutely, Your Grace. The apartment that Mr. Zala has arranged for is quite lovely. He really is such a thoughtful man - he’ll be a wonderful father for sure.”

She doesn’t tell Dr. Pitagawa that she had argued tremendously with Athrun about this particular arrangement - flying the doctor over to stay the entire time until delivery, having additional security, so on, so forth. It all seemed so excessive.

"The whole point of us getting out of Orb was to have fewer people breathing down our necks! We’ve always been able to sneak off there, without the whole contigent!”

“Don’t exaggerate, Cagalli. We might have taken some risks in the past, but you’re with child now. It’s publicly known too. Even if we don’t announce where you are for the delivery, people eventually will know. They usually do.” He hadn’t said it, but they both knew he was referring to an increased likelihood of assasination attempts.

“But shuttling Dr. Pitagawa from Orb to Vanuatu? What about her other patients?”

He'd insisted, in return for his agreement. "Dr. Pitagawa’s already agreed. It costs you and Orb’s taxpayers nothing - I'm the one arranging for it.”

“It’s not necessary! Keep your money out of it! I don’t want this! There are other doctors in Vanuatu!”

“Surely you don’t expect to have some random doctor drive to the house and deliver our child suddenly, with no prior knowledge of your health and body’s history?”

His voice had tightened and she should have taken it as sign to slow down, but she stupidly pushed on. In a strange way, she had wanted a rise from aggravating him. “Yes, actually! Dr. Pitagawa can just send over the existing records for a new doctor. Just because we have some money doesn’t mean we need to throw it in the air - plenty of random doctors are called when people give birth suddenly!”

“There is nothing sudden about this birth.” Athrun had said, gripping suddenly at her flailing arms. His conversational tone hadn’t changed, but his eyes were flared, undercutting his mild countenance. “You can be as selfish and impulsive about how you do things in your private life - I couldn’t care less - but I want this done for our child. There’s no point having all the money and privilege otherwise.”

She’d been stung, but she simply hid it with more anger. Already, the baby had taken over his heart. “You’re not the one who has to answer to the public.”

“It’ll be nothing worse than what they said when we married in secret - or what they’ll say when they realise you’re having the child away from Orb. It’s your public relations adviser's job to handle it.”

It had been semi-sensible and Athrun was absolutely unwilling to be dissuaded from taking those measures. For all his niceties and manners, he could also be very harsh and intolerant. And in the end, unwilling to go on arguing and facing his cold, disapproving silences in the house, Cagalli reluctantly agreed to the entire spate of his proposed measures. It wasn’t as if she could simply send him away and stop meeting him the way she might have before their marriage.

Then having gained what he’d wanted, he reverted to his usual benevolence and old charm. He had been almost luminous with happiness, the way she was expected to be with child, and he resumed his generous smiles, constant flitting to her side, and bestowed his attention and those luxurious little touches that she loathed to love. It made her want to scream.

Things had changed too quickly. In the first months of their marriage, Cagalli had worried about his exposure to the public, but she soon realised that her husband seemed perfectly adapt at avoiding the reporters’ questions on his private life, with or without her help or protection.

Maybe his work in the heavily-restricted military grounds or being frequently posted on overseas flight trainings or testing missions allowed him to avoid the media more than her. But even then, Athrun could somehow focus the spotlight on his professional accomplishments even when he didn’t have her experience of being in the public eye and her retinue of advisors. Apart from constantly blaring the fact that he was  that homicidal, ex-Plant chairman’s son, the reports mostly left him alone - rather unfairly, she thought - turning their innuendo and pointed remarks towards Cagalli.

Then she’d become pregnant, and Varia had been spot-on about the announcement of the pregnancy turning the general opinion around. Once again, the reports were glowing and everybody praised and loved Cagalli and appreciated her. Because who didn’t love babies?

She’d found herself growing both dependent and quietly hateful of how gentle and sweet Athrun was while she slowly grew bigger with child. He was so considerate in prioritising her needs and indulging her whims; when he touched her at night; when he held her hair out of her face while she threw up in the mornings, before cleaning her up and leaving for work on a new schedule that he’d negotiated for. She half-wished that he’d snap and scream, maybe show a side as ugly as hers. He just didn’t seem to struggle as much as she did.

“There’s no need.” she’d said, when he suggested asking for special approval to take more leave, abandon the Antarctic testing, and go with her to Vanuatu. She’d wanted to spite him too, so she added, “I’d rather enjoy Vanuatu by myself for the month. Anyway, your precious baby will have the doctor - the same doctor - at its beck and call.”

The idea of going somewhere without the office and the rush of reporters outside the Atha estate and the Parliament house had cheered her up at first. Now, the seclusion of the villa and the endless stretch of seas swallowing the distance is a bit harrowing.

This place is no less of a fortress than where she’d lived in Olofat, just that it's less obvious on this island. In the past, she’d always sent the guards away before coming up to this hill by herself. Even now, she hates the idea of all the guards and the security automatons surrounding them, stepping foot in a place that always served as a hideaway. But it’s what it is.

When her things are unpacked, she sits on the balcony outside the bedroom, letting the perpetual breeze and tranquil scenery of this island wash over her. His erstwhile absence feels so jarring, because she’s never been here without him. The truth is that she’s missed him more than she wants to admit, with him on remote missions this whole month. In a way, she forced it, just to prove something that nobody else cares to see.

As if sensing her thoughts, the baby moves and she strokes her belly slowly, trying to fight the dull ache of her muscle, and the growing dread that she’s still trapped in her body even outside Orb.

It doesn’t take longer to darken, and the volcanoes lurk in the distance, their dark slopes like a shadow-play against the sky’s stage. They hadn’t erupted in a century and were thought to be dormant, but Athrun had been to the village square enough to hear and recount the ancient stories of the fiery destruction and subsequent fertility of Vanuatu’s many tiny islands.

There’s the last of the birdsong faintly whistling in the air, soon to fade into the purple evening. It doesn’t distract from how low she feels, and suddenly, she begins to sniffle. It comes quietly and messily, and it doesn’t last that long. It feels alright to cry here when she’s alone, and maybe it’s the release that she hadn’t realised she needed, even if her frustration lingers.

When she eventually draws and takes a slow, indulgent bath to wash off the shuttle's air and that engine smell, she finds the bathsalts that he’s left at the side. She removes her ring to lather her body and shampoo her hair, even if she doesn’t remove the ear stud in her lobe. She normally would have if Athrun hadn’t been around to notice and admonish her about her prioritising convenience and comfort over caution. But maybe she’s finally coming around to caution - that awful abundance of caution.

The guards wait quietly, outside the bedroom, outside the house, quite hidden. Their rotations of shifts continue, even on this island, a small camp set up just near the private lagoon area, the transfer-shuttle almost obscurred by the thick foliage, as if to leave the illusion undisturbed. As long as she wears the stud in her ear, they’ll know where she is.

For now, she leans back into the tub, soaking and doing the exercises that Dr. Pitagawa reminded her to do. The pills and some broth on the shuttle were all that she could stomach, and she wonders why nobody ever told her how much she would miss having an appetite, or being able to move with the ease that she had.

The thought of Kira and Lacus' visit next month currently brings her more weariness than anticipation. But after she towels down and changes into a robe, she checks her messages, sends a few to assure that she's arrived safely, and finally crawls into bed. The stud is still in her ear, even if she’s removed her ring again, and it presses into the pillow. A little discomfort means nothing now.

Unbidden, she thinks about Etienne, even though she’s no longer in Orb. He’d glanced at her when they’d passed each other on the way to the last Parliament sitting. Her body, thin as it was becoming with the frequent nausea, was finally showing the swell of the child.

“It was always about business, wasn’t it?” he’d said. He’d arrived at her office after hearing about the marriage, and she had stupidly let him through. His handsome face had been twisted with rage. “All that time when we were together when I was telling you about the future we had together. Letting me make love to you, asking me to quell publications of those rumours of you seeing other people - when they were true! Telling me that you were sorting it out, that you were really considering, that you just needed time. You let me think you loved me. You lying cunt.”

_But_ _I did love you, in a way. I was lonely, and you did everything to support me. I wish that I still had your friendship. It’s just that he and I are bound in a way that you can’t understand. I wish I hadn’t hurt you._

She dreams about Athrun’s return. Why, why, why had she insisted that she was fully-equipped to carry on by herself, and that he should carry on as usual with his duties too? Putting up a strong front was always a badge of honour for her, perverse as it was, but now the month was stretching before her, and still she was too proud to call and tell him to forgo his duties and come back immediately.

_ I’m supposed to be stronger than this. I have to be. _

Then he’s there, brushing aside her bangs to kiss her forehead, so light and imperceptible that it could be the wind. He says something softly, and she can’t see his face, and she tries to say something.

He had been so excited, so overjoyed, when she gave him the news. She had watched the love in his face grow, shining through his eyes and lips. And yet, the happiness of realising that she was carrying their child wasn’t proving much stronger than the fear of the future and her crippling nausea, which seemed to strike whenever she tried to get better.

It wasn’t supposed to happen so quickly, she wants to tell him.  _ I didn’t know it would happen like this. I wanted it a little, because you wanted it so much, but I wasn’t prepared . I don’t feel particularly maternal, I just feel tired and angry. I barely know how to be a wife. I don’t know how to be a mother. _

There are seagulls all around him, even if she can't see them in the night. Then it grows darker and she's dreaming of the desert and the seas.

X

In the first three weeks, and almost as a masochistic response to her body’s protests, she insists on checking her work messages and keeping up with the ongoing state affairs in Orb. Ever-dutiful, Daniele doesn’t complain about providing the constant updates that she requests, but Mina eventually convinces her that everything is under control.

“There’s nothing so urgent in Orb that you can’t rest and concentrate on getting stronger for the delivery.” Mina had remarked drily. “I’d enjoy your time off, if I were you.”

They’re both perfectly aware that Orb can and does apparently function without her, but Mina does her the kindness of not saying it.

When she speaks with Lacus and Mirallia, Cagalli avoids admitting how badly she’s fighting with her body. As much as Cagalli’s grateful for the offer, she hates the idea of Lacus leaving Leon and Silvia to visit earlier and help look after Cagalli. Her friends are wonderful, but she can’t bear the thought of them worrying.

She wonders if Athrun talks to his friends and colleagues about becoming a parent, and whether they give him advice too. It’s possible, but the idea of Dearka or Yzak doing that is ridiculous - they don’t seem to do more than rib each other and play racing games or sports when the three of them are together.

On her part, she forces herself to keep the routine of waking up early even if she failed to sleep that night before. If she can muster enough strength, she goes to the beach behind the villa, walking to keep her mind from falling slack. Small wonder, she thinks, that so many opted for other methods of conception, even with the higher risks of miscarriage. Well, too fucking late.

Breakfast is usually a slice of plain toast and hard boiled eggs. The automaton does most of the meal preparation when she has any appetite, including the cooking, cleaning, and washing up, but Cagalli insists on making breakfast at least. It’s not the kind of breakfast that inspires, but it’s a breakfast that she can stomach.

Sometimes, the bodyguards come up to the house and make themselves visible to offer help. But she turns them away enough for them to know not to. In a way, the routine is almost more important than what she can actually achieve.

It was clear from the first day that she would not be going down the slope and traipsing into the village. She’d had to accept that the guards would drive to the village for supplies without her, since sending automatons out in a small island like this would only draw unnecessary attention. Sometimes, she wishes she could go, but then it’s mainly the allure of doing something silly and reckless.

She usually plays some music in the house, those orchestral symphonies and old blues tunes that Athrun tends to favour. There’s an old record player that still works, his mother’s name inscribed at its base. It’s an antiquated design, but she amuses herself by playing those and listening to the quaint, imperfect sounds of the disc-shaped recordings, instead of streaming endless lists of music. Those old melodies sometimes crackle and echo like ghost voices in the house. Even as she revels in the isolation and her temporary lack of answerability, she wonders what truly pushed her to ask for it in the first place.

Before the curtain of evening falls, she walks on the seashore. Anything from the spices that she had once enjoyed to the smell of fish could have triggered nausea, but the sea air somehow never does. It’s an air that she instinctively understands, because it was always part of her childhood. The roiling of the waves is constant and distracting, and if she pretends a little, she doesn’t feel like she’s trailed by a discreet bodyguard or three.

Mostly, she wanders around the beach, picking at seashells, and sometimes poking at little crabs. Sometimes, she speaks to her child, humming to it and herself. It kicks stronger every day.

“I hope you’ll like running and dancing like me. I’ll try not to swear so much after you’re born, I don’t want you picking up my bad habits. Maybe you’ll take after your father, he’s good with tools and it’s so nice to have him fix things in the house, so that I don’t have to call Rikyo and send for somebody. Well, I just hope you’ll be healthy and happy. That’s the most important thing.”

There’s a green turtle that she finds one day, washed up and blinking its slow eyes at her, before a wave sends it back. It’s a little pleasure, feeling the sun-warmed sand trickle and pour between the hourglasses of her curled toes, walking for as long as she can until her exhaustion makes her turn back.

She reads whatever she wants these days, although sheer habit and discipline makes her keep up with the news. The books for new mothers and parenting tips that Lacus had so thoughtfully brought her and flagged pages out for her are boring, and she persists through one, but guiltily sets the rest aside.

Instead, she pulls out the hard copies of wildlife features and the detective stories that Athrun keeps, ignoring the tomes on mechanics and material science. There’s a gorgeous botanical one on the flora and fauna of Vanuatu, and she finally learns the name of the bird with its lazer red beak and outlandish purple-blue feathers, scurrying around with yellow feet.

She also rediscovers the old novels that she enjoyed before, on life, adventures, and fantasy worlds. She writes in an old-fashioned diary, sometimes leaving different coloured flowers in pages to press them, the way Mana taught her a lifetime ago.

Quickly, Athrun’s daily call becomes the highlight of her waking hours, and she loves and irrationally resents him for it. There’s nothing much to update him on, and he’s never been much of a talker, at least until he gets worked up. Then he doesn’t shut up. But still she craves hearing his voice, the silences when he’s thinking, and his breathing when it’s quiet enough from where he’s calling.

He calls mostly once a day, except when he’s doing overnight flights and he doesn’t want to disturb her sleep. He sounds so steady and comforting, his voice like a cello, telling her that he’ll be with her and their daughter soon. He sheds that aloofness that he sometimes carries around him.

When she insists that she’s enjoying herself perfectly without him sticking close and nagging, he laughs infuriatingly. But he doesn’t rub it in, to his credit. She wonders if he’s pretending to keep it together on some level too, the way he has for most of his adult life, just so he can keep getting into those war machines and complete those feats of anti-gravity and engineering.

It’s strange, having gained what she wanted. Half a year into their marriage, and already with child. Everyone’s said it. She should be so lucky.

‘Fuck you, Athrun.’ she thinks angrily, one afternoon when she’s lying on the couch, completely drained of energy even though she’d only walked for an hour. ‘Getting through a genetically-shortened puberty and never having to wipe blood from between your legs. Never having to worry about hair, or acne with that pretty face of yours. Telling me how much you want it, how beautiful I am, how beautiful our child will be, when you’ll never have to shift your organs and give birth. Fucking man. Fucking Coordinator.’

X

When Cagalli pries enough, Lacus eventually tells her about the visits to the old house in the Plants. Cagalli had never thought to ask her friend and sister-in-law, but recently, with nothing new to distract her, she’s wondered more and more about it.

“Athrun will be a wonderful parent, of course.” Lacus says, in that sweetly incisive manner of hers. “If that’s what you were really wondering about.”

Cagalli blushes. “It’s just - it’s just that he doesn’t seem to have that many memories or things to say about his parents. There are things here that have his mother’s name engraved into them, and he has that photograph of her. But there aren’t family albums and whenever I try to ask, he doesn’t say much. Isn’t that weird?”

“I’m sure he’s told you about everything that he remembers. People don’t usually want to hold onto unhappy memories.”

“Yes, but I thought you might remember what he was like, what things were like.”

Lacus begins to answer, but behind her, the door bursts open and little Silvia runs in, squealing about Leon having caught a spider. Then Silvia sees who her mother is speaking to, and jumps up and down excitedly. “Ooh, Auntie! Hi!”

“Hi, Silvia. How are you?”

“Happy! I just caught a butterfly and Leon has the biggest, coolest spider with these long, long legs and a scary face -” Her cherubic cheeks puff in imitation and she crosses her violet eyes menacingly.

“Alright, Silvia, you can come back to chat later if your aunt isn’t too tired. Next time, please make sure that you knock first. And will you please let dad know to start dinner without me?” Lacus stands and gently leads her daughter out, shutting the door and locking it. She sighs.

“By the time we met, Athrun wasn’t so different from how he is now, at least to me. I visited quite a lot then, since we were going to the same finishing school, and mostly because our fathers were close friends then. Lenore always was so welcoming, she was a real Junius girl with her plants and gardening. And those homemade cakes and pies, oh my.”

“She had so much warmth and kindness for everyone. I told her I wished she was my mother and she said she thought of me as a daughter. It made me want to marry Athrun even more at that time, if only to call her my mother. I always told Kira that I would name my child after her, you see. She was strong and had her own mind, and she was really beautiful and elegant. She loved people and people loved her back so much, I used to wonder if Athrun ever became jealous.”

“His father was always so stern. He was a very clever and thoughtful man, as you know, always three steps ahead and planning something. It seemed like he was good at everything he put his hand to. He came from old money, and he could have lived more simply. But he was very ambitious. In those days, he was always trying to drum up business, and then when he entered politics, it was about political support. He really provided his family and friends with a lot, but maybe he expected as much of the people around him.”

“I would sometimes catch Athrun in his room, all pale and wet-eyed, trying not to cry. He never told me what had happened, but he acted like it was nothing. Then I would ask Lenore if he had been beaten or scolded or if he was ill or something, and it was usually that he was being ignored by his father for not doing something properly. It could go on for weeks, you know, that kind of cold treatment.”

“Maybe his father knew how much Athrun looked up to him and how badly Athrun wanted his approval or some tenderness. Maybe that’s why he deliberately withheld it from Athrun. But if his father saw him crying or sulking, it would be much worse, so Athrun never fought openly or threw a tantrum. My own father used to say it was Patrick Zala’s way of teaching Athrun that nobody owed him the time of the day.”

“How could anyone do that?” Cagalli is stunned. But then she remembers the worst arguments that she’d had with Athrun.

Lacus sighs. “All parents love their children in their own way, I suppose. We do our best with what we have.”

X

She has a scare in the third week, when she wakes up and sees her sheets spotted. It takes her all the years of being strong and working though crisis to refrain from calling Athrun in tears and to have him soothe and reassure her.

Instead, she calls Dr. Pitagawa, describing the situation factually, as if it was merely a day of the parliamentary readings. Her voice only shakes at the end.

When Dr. Pitagawa shows up in the promised ten minutes to examine her, she tells Cagalli that it’s fairly common and assures her that there’s nothing really wrong.

Somehow ashamed that she had been so afraid and mortified that he was right, she doesn’t tell Athrun about it. Why did women's bodies have to be so fragile, if they were strong enough to birth another human? It was always so awful, each paradigm of change. Everything was always new, and it always had to be difficult.

“Do you think you’ll ever regret it?” Cagalli asks him suddenly, during their call. “Marrying me and having this baby?”

“How could I?” He sounds so genuinely flabbergasted that she feels ashamed for even asking.

“Well, before this, you wouldn’t have had to make all these arrangements and people wouldn’t question you all the time. I mean -” she thinks about his father, and quickly corrects herself. “At least, you wouldn’t be questioned for being with me. You wouldn’t have had to be the supportive spouse. It could have been easier for you, in a way.”

“Not everything comes easily. I wouldn’t change a thing. I wish I could be there, right now.”

It makes her struggle to sit up, and she wipes at her eyes, glad that he can’t see. “Everything’s fine. Just concentrate on the rest of the work. I bet when you’re here and you have to deal with my hormones, you’ll wish the mission was a year long and that paternity leave was much shorter than you’re getting.”

He laughs, and she knows that she’s reassured them both. But Athrun isn’t a woman, she thinks, and he’ll never face the constant refrain of the body fighting against itself.

X

The summer break after Cagalli had returned from boarding school, Mana had sat her down and told her why monthly blood was to be expected. Mana had been so matter-of-fact about it, in the same way that she often called out Cagalli for being untidy or not taking more care with her appearance.

By then, Cagalli had already heard enough from the other girls at school, prim and extremely privileged as they presented. She’d kissed a boy in school and hadn’t thought much of it, but she knew enough to keep away, as Mana had always warned. Then the blood had arrived, and she’d learned over time to lay towels down on those nights to prevent the incessant changing of sheets. She’d done her level-best to not be squeamish, and learned not to touch those despicable zits. But she’d hated the wash of golden fuzz in the crooks of her body. Her body, which had been cooperative up to that point, had started getting in the way with her round breasts and round hips.

Later, when she’d stolen off to the Desert Dawn, the women fighters in the camps had warned her she was better off staying behind on certain close-range attacks.

“It’s one thing to be a crack-shot on that moving vehicle, from that kind of distance.” one had told her. “We know you’re fucking good at it. We get it, we’re all good at it. But listen. If your vehicle overturns, get up and run. Fast. Don’t let anyone catch you. If they kill you immediately, they’re showing you mercy.”

In the week that she first went there, Kisaka had watched her wince as the camp’s medic shot the implant into her arm. Ahmed had lifted the flap of the tent, poking his head in and letting a bunch of tundra sand blow in, but she hardly noticed, and the other women shooed him off angrily.

“You’ll thank me." the medic had told her brusquely, hitting her arm to check that the implant was settled, and ignoring Cagalli’s resulting squeak of pain. “Humans have advanced to fight with all kinds of weapons, but a woman’s body is its own enemy.”

She had been reminded constantly of her body’s weakness because it was a woman’s, and all the risks of close-range combat. Little wonder that it had been her poorest area of combat performance.

In the mornings when she’s wracked with dry heaving, and during the nights when she’s damp with sweat, she understands in a new way what the women around her meant.

Thinking back, it had always been the same refrain, whether fighting through the small pillow of pain in her belly, or experiencing the most exquisite, secret pleasures of the flesh.

For every moment when she’d taken another body into hers, whether she loved that person or not, her body had craved and been vulnerable and open. Each time, she had wanted on that visceral level. It was as if her body was basically designed to betray her, no matter how hard she worked for control.

X

Finally on the afternoon of Athrun’s arrival, she awakens from her nap suddenly, with a jolt. Like she had fallen off a chair. But she’s still on the bed, her hands and feet numb with pins and needles, and the salty breeze is in the air, omnipresent.

She’d forgotten to draw the curtains before, but the snakeskin palm trees outside the window cast barcodes of shade into the room. The white and yellow butterfly orchids that she’d cut from the natangura just three days ago are already wilting in the vase on the dressing table.

It takes a bit more effort than this morning to force herself to get up and wash up. Her body definitely feels heavier than when she first arrived, and the new dimension of her limbs’ soreness and the stiffness of chest makes her wince. Still, she moves down the padded landing as fast she can, holding the railing with a grip that she wouldn’t have bothered with just months ago. When she sees the car that he uses when on this island, just outside the windows, her heart floods with relief.

The guards and automatons aren’t in sight, and they must be lurking about outside somewhere as usual. She finds his dark overcoat and luggage in the dining room, barely unpacked, and ignores the food on the table.

It’s almost unsurprising, finding Athrun seated on the carpet, working in the side room that she hadn't had the energy to look into. He’s never been one to rest. He’s begun converting the room into a nursery, even though there are four months left to go.

"Cagalli." His eyes flit almost immediately from her face to her belly. He scrambles to stand with the alertness that he's been cloaked in ever since she informed him of her pregnancy. He looks so, so truly happy, she feels ashamed for ever resenting him.

“Welcome back.”

She crosses over, stepping carefully past the tools and wooden parts. Her hand moves to her belly, instinctively, and she despairs again at how bloody inconvenient and horrible it is.

"Did I wake you? I thought it would be quiet if I closed the door."

"No, you didn't wake me. I slept like a log, actually. I thought you would be here. And you are." She cracks a grin, trying not to think about the month before and the remaining months before them.

She hugs him tightly, but quickly pulls back before he can feel her properly. She’d felt such a wave of distaste when she studied the latest changes to her body in the full-length reflection. The bump and her heavy breasts with the faintly visible veins at the sides looked even more foreign against her thin arms and legs, but at least there wasn’t nausea for the past few days. She peers at him. "How did it go?"

"It was fine, we completed it. I wanted it to be over sooner, but we finished it only just within schedule.” He looks absolutely well despite the month of cold, stress and constant piloting, and she envies his creamy skin and perfectly smooth hair. Even in his simple white shirt and dark slacks, he looks like a painting; one of those classical, beautiful men who posed for immortalisation in oil colours. It’s so unfair.

In turn, he studies her, and maybe he can tell that she hasn’t been eating so well. “There's some bread and fruit on the table. I’m making a stew for dinner and -"

"No, no. I’m not hungry yet." The nausea has eased up, but the thought of eating and being fed is almost sickening by itself. Had she been in Orb, she would have long insisted on heading to the office as part of the continuous revolt to anything her pregnant body tried to stop her from doing. Already, the last of the routine that she'd been gripping onto is deep in the waves under the state-shuttle that brought her here. “Tell me how the missions went?”

He looks slightly sheepish. “The last bit was a complete failure. I’ll have to do a lot of explaining in the report.”

I chose this, she reminds herself. Away from her work, her routine, her members of staff, Mina and the office.

X

Watching Athrun work on setting up the cot makes her think about her father. Her earliest memory is of being tucked in at night, Uzumi patting her forehead in lieu of a goodnight kiss because his beard had made her squeal. Her parent hadn't made a habit of it, but she didn't mind. What was there to compare to, if the frequent absences and statesman ways were all that she knew? Would she kiss her child goodnight, every night?

She looks at Athrun and wonders if he'll know how to do it; whether his father or mother had read him stories during the short years of a Coordinator's childhood, the way Uzumi had tried.

It's difficult to broach the past with someone who can be as deliberately colourless and introverted as Athrun, but it’s far more difficult to give up the hope of opening him. Even the thought of another woman trying to unlock his secrets makes something in her twist, even if Cagalli never acknowledged it or maybe numbed it to dullness in the past. He’d nearly left her before - the memory of it makes her cradle her belly, even before she realises it.

Athrun's concentrating, working with probably no inkling of the swirling, mercurial thoughts in her mind. He doesn’t like it when she tries to speak with him when he’s working. Men are simple, primitive creatures like that. Still -

"I can help nail the frame," she offers again. He’s finished setting up a small bed for the sleep-interrupted nights that they anticipate, and he’s started on the baby’s cot this morning.

“No, just rest.”

"But three pairs of hands can set this up in no time." She sets down the mug of warm honey water that he made and starts untucking her feet from where they're curled in the armchair.

He looks up and frowns. The automaton on the other side of the nursery doesn't pause, still humming and whirring quietly as it shakes out the curtains and new window blinds.

"I only let you in here because you promised you'd rest. You barely ate anything for dinner yesterday. This morning too. I’ll go to the village later to fetch some ginger and tamarind, it’s said to whet the appetite.”

She knows better than to insist otherwise. The augmentation of their roles has already occurred, maybe from the day that she suggested that they leave Orb like this. It’s frustrating. And yet, when she feels their child in her, and she looks at him, his mouth pursed, sleeves rolled up, his hands hammering away, something inside her clenches for the love of him.

She settles for sliding to the ground, pressing her back against the base of the armchair, watching his far broader back move with his work. Close to him, but not too close. She’s seen men and women stare at him plenty of times. Had they been as taken in by the sculpted lines of his body and the vague femininity, his mother’s traces, in those features? She had been surprised by the strength of that lean waist and the force of those graceful hands.

He catches her staring at him and smiles.

“You should enjoy the rest.” he says. “Before our girl arrives and there’s no more break for us.”

“I’ll do what I want.” she shoots back, with her usual impertinence. “And for the record, I think it’s a boy.”  _Better a boy, so that his heart and body won’t feel as much pain_.

“We’ll see.” He keeps working, sliding the wooden parts together. “Or have you changed your mind and decided to ask Dr. Pitagawa?”

“No, I only care that the baby’s healthy.”  _I don’t want to see - I don’t want to know_.  “But I’m sure it’s a boy.” she repeats, stubbornly.

He looks at her calmly. “Then the next will be a girl.”

“I’ll never let you do this again.” she growls.

“You say that now.” Athrun says, and she flushes at his indulgent tone, at the memories of their nights and mornings of what they’d done to cummulate the life within her. “We’ll see.”

Just to challenge him, she lifts a wooden part - what appears to be part of the base. He takes it from her with thanks, with watchful eyes. As much as he's never begrudged her the power and authority of her role and standing in Orb, she wonders if there’s something under that polish and calmness, the same thing that makes him stop her from helping with the nursery.

This is what Mina meant. Their unborn child had already bound her to him far more than her love or their solemn vows in witness of their loved ones.

She settles back, the smooth, black velvet of the armchair against the back of her neck, her hair fanned on its seat, watching him. She thinks of the first, small bed in her old room. It had served her for years, but she returned one day for a summer break, and found a new bed. Then her room had started changing soon enough - a new desk and chair to match her spurt of height. She'd seen less of her father in that time. Boarding school in Yalafath had taken up most of her time, anyway. If only she’d known about Heliopolis sooner...

“Do you prefer white? Or something else?” His voice breaks into her daydream.

She glances at the swatch that he holds up for her. “Green, I think. Let’s save the white for when the scribbling starts.”

The light enters his face when he laughs. “Good idea. She’ll want to draw, maybe she’ll draw her parents.”

A long time ago, her father’s house-staff had requested that she refrain from sticking posters of her favourite performers on the walls. Not that Cagalli had listened. But the staff had been quick to take those down. The walls of the house, Mana had admonished her, were so old and so difficult to repaper with the right kind of print. Poster marks would simply not do.

But since then, Cagalli’s flipped it all the finger, and had the walls in the Atha manor redone with standard, non-antique wallpaper. It was just easier for maintenance after the Second War.

Now their child can scribble all it wants, here and back in Olofat. Maybe, the child will grow into a teenager who wants to put up posters of movies or bands. No antique wallpaper to get in the way. The thought almost makes her giddy.

The sun streams in from the large window at the end of the room, and she spies an iguana scale up the tree’s branch, its lime eyes bulging and its tongue coiled like gunpowder. But Athrun’s so focused on the cot, he doesn’t see.

The sweat on his neck slides slowly, down to his collarbone as he hammers away. He was so young, and so different. Parts of him have softened, but other parts have become more rigid. Something of her youth has trickled away too, liquid and malleable, going with life, slowly. Maybe, she muses, if they start like this, they'll eventually be sufficient as parents.

"Did your father do this for you? Set up a nursery, paper the walls, the works?”

The hammering slows, then stops abruptly. But the automaton continues humming, not having received any signal to pause. Athrun turns halfway around so that he faces her. For a moment she's afraid his face will have the same blankness it has when she asks him a question that he doesn't want answered.

On the good days, he smiles it away. All this time, and there's a part of him that he locks away, maybe to protect them both. On some other days, his silence is stony.

But maybe he senses the sympathy in her, because when he looks at her, she can see everything all over again, suddenly. He can’t hide the fierce boy wearing his red uniform with his knife ready under the sheets, or the boy in the Messiah who hadn’t said goodbye to his father. Not from her.

"I don't know." he says. A wrinkle snakes into his brow. "Maybe. I never asked before. I just - I read books on what to do, and I asked Kira and Mwu.” He looks at her, lost. “Did your father prepare the cot for you?”

“No. He would have been too busy - Kisaka or Mana did it.” She lies so easily, the way Etienne had accused. But she can’t help it; she’d taken all the good memories of her father, and Athrun had so few of his own.

She presses forward a little, feeling sorry for him, and she’s close enough to ease away that wrinkle with her lips and kiss his cheek. He lets go of the tool and brings his hand to hers, taking it to his chest, then closing his eyes and smiling. A hundred words, in that small movement.

It's innocent enough when she presses a light kiss to his lips, but when he kisses her back, the way he parts her mouth to find her tongue is greedy. Her hand is still pressed to his chest and she feels his pulse quicken when he brings his other hand to linger on the swell of her midriff, tracing and stroking with his fingertips. He did this for so long, last night, as if to make up for his absence last month.

When he breaks the kiss, his voice has become lower, deeper in the way that she remembers. "She's getting so big. She’ll be strong, like you.”

"I don't know. Twitchy little thing. She moves a lot when I'm in the water. I don't think she likes it."

"She'll have to get used to it. Her mother is a proper swimmer."

"Those born and raised in Orb usually are." she reminds him. "It comes with the air and seas.”

"I think so too.” He continues stroking at her belly with his hand, and her hand can feel his heart beat.

He brings his cheek down to press his mouth against her belly, and he's murmuring to their child. "We'll go swimming more. It’s not Orb, but the seas and oceans are connected. You'll get used to it, hmm?"

There’s a painting of some silver trees leaned against the wall, behind him, waiting to be hung up. She stares at it, somehow wanting to keep her eyes fixed on it as his hands mould over her belly anew to explore her. With her so wan, it’s hard to believe that he would find her desirable. But maybe, it’s just about the swell between her thighs.

The automaton is still papering the walls with soft green, and continues measuring and slicing the roll. It carries out its task with no care to the humans seated on the floor, so mechanically focused that it’s almost funny. It distracts her. But when his hands skim up over her nightgown to squeeze her swollen breasts, a sharp pain spikes into the layer of dull ache.

A high-pitched sound slips partially from her mouth, and she bites the inside of her cheek to hide her discomfort, feeling the pulse of energy pooling where his hands grip her.

It catches his attention and he stares into her face, watching her reaction. He tucks the lock of hair behind her right ear and touches the earlobe gently, massaging at her piercings, brushing his finger pads against the stud, as if to check it’s there.

“The guards are just outside.” she whispers.

“You won’t call them.” His eyes watch her unblinkingly. He touches the stud in her ear again, pressing down hard as if to prove his point. They both know that the sensor is unresponsive to fingerprints that aren’t hers, and that she could have called, so many times, over all those years. “They won’t see.”

There’s a tiny but unmistakable tightening in her belly as he cups her and slowly rubs her nipples with his thumbs, smoothing the creases out and coaxing her buds into firm protrusions, making outlines against the thin cotton. She shivers in discomfort, but there are also the threads of pleasure snaking in her blood, from his fingers down into her core, and her veins swell with milk under his ministrations.

The more he massages at her shoulders, kneading into the tense points, then touches her swollen breasts, the more she feels the pressure clawing up within her body, until she might scream. Her breasts are warmer, fuller in his hands, and she’s reminded again of their soreness. When biting her lip draws a little blood, she flings the back of her hand over her mouth, moaning with discomfort when he rakes a thumb hard against an oversensitised nipple.

When he dips his head to seal his wet, warm mouth over her, his saliva soaks into her cotton robe as he sucks though the threadcount, making her depths throb and her nerves flare on the ends of her chest. She cries out then, unable to stop it. She doesn't have to look to know that his mouth and her milk, thin and weak as it is, has left a stain across the fabric. His eyes move to her face again, the green dilating slightly, and she gulps.

Then he stands and takes her hand, pulling her up and away from the halo of tools and cot parts, half-leading, half-dragging to settle her across the small bed. 

He signals that the automaton pause, and folds up her knees and arranges himself carefully between her thighs, spreading his weight on his hands to put none on her. The thought of her thin limbs, bloated body and paleness makes her squirm, and she has half a mind to insist on her tiredness and avoid his touch as she did yesterday. But it’s been so long, and feeling his strong, muscled body and that deceptively slim waist settling between her legs brings a candle in her core.

When he pulls apart the top of her robe, parting it past her shoulders, her darkened, puffy nipples prickle with the exposure and his stare. He brushes his thumb against her again, more carefully now, rolling up a small dribble slipping to the side, feeling her wetness. She winces, turning her face again, unable to look at him. She covers her chest with trembling hands.

“How long?” His voice leaves no room for her to avoid the question.

“Last week.” she says quietly. Her cheeks are hot with shame. “Dr. Pitagawa said I could leave it be or um - express and store it, maybe use a compress. I haven’t done - I was hoping it would go away...”

“It won’t go away.” he intones, low and so soft. “You know it’s quite the opposite.” He covers one of her hands with his. He sounds so kind, so loving, she almost listens. “Let me. I’ll make you feel better.”

He settles himself down slowly, redistributing his weight carefully above her, and then places his forehead to frame her collarbone. His breath spreads over her as his mouth playfully bites the back of her hand covering herself. But the very thought of her leaking uncontrollably makes her curl in on herself, and she looks at him, flushed and fearful. “No, please...”

“You can let me do this.” he says gently, almost as neutral as before. But she recognises something else, dark and astringent in his voice. “Or would you rather be milked on your knees, like a cow?”

It’s enough to make tears prickle into her eyes, and he pries away her hands easily, turning her palms up to entwine with his. But her whimpered protest of humiliation and the sting of the cool air against her exposed nipples is short-lived when he cups at her and envelopes one in wet heat.

Her ‘oh’ is silent, scrunched into itself and between her eyes. There are new planes of hypersensitivity that spark beneath the dull soreness, her entire body buzzing with her tingling nerves against his damp skin.

The first brush of his tongue makes her heart jump to her throat. The second, a rougher scrape, makes tiny needles of sensation erupt over her shoulders, pins running everywhere as warmth rises. His lips seal firmly over her skin, and with his soft hair brushing her chin, he gives one long suck, drawing and draining at her. She cries out audibly then, unable to stop the tingling rush.

The heavy ache that she’d tried to ignore for so long is easing, slowly, but there’s a new, prickling warmth with every coax of his tongue, and the massaging movements of his hand. Her breasts are pincushions for each lick and brush, and she feels herself leak more and more, even while her spine involuntarily arches and her core tightens. She struggles at him still, conflicted with the familiarity of him with the newness of her body’s changes and the mound of her belly between them. But he holds her flailing hand, suckling at her writhing body, keeping her from shielding herself, and slowly, slowly, she relaxes.

When she does, his mouth grows more insistent yet, claiming her and the let-down. It’s not new, his touch, but now he claims her before their child will and maybe even after, and her nerves spark electric at the thought. It’s equal parts agonising and delicious, the sensations flowering into her skull with the steady pull and swallow of his mouth and soft lips latching on her, the rough texture of his tongue lavishing her already sensitive point.

Something deep and innate wants to break the seal of his mouth on her and shove him away. She wants to insist on some measure of decency despite the throbbing, mindless pleasure, as if to repeal the access that she’d given him before, as if she might regain something from keeping away. But she doesn’t.

Maybe it's just the irrefutable familiarity of his body against her, with all this contact after so many weeks without him. Or perhaps it's just the thought of the man that she knew as a boy, with the memory of his teary eyes like crushed leaves, trying not to weep. A boy, made into a killer, deprived of some type of love, engineered by the wars into something else.

It doesn’t take long for her to nuzzle her face in his hair, almost drooling, absorbing his scent, her body thrumming from inside and out. The wall behind him is half-papered, frozen in time with the paused automaton, the translucent green shade like glass. It feels good now, as he’d promised, and she closes her eyes, sinking into sensation, the silence punctuated only by the darkly wet, kissing sounds of his mouth on her and the distant birdsong. She’s breathing more deeply than she’s done in a few days. Her mind feels strangely blank.

When she’s emptied, he releases and latches onto the opposite breast, licking at the spill, then laving up to cover her areola and drawing in as much as he can take into his mouth. The same static waves wash over her brain again with his covetous mouth working on her, and her vision swims, like the silver screens of a system going slack. Too late, she recalls the rush of chemicals that she had read about. Her mind is so hazy, the same mind that could process all that information, and make decisions impacting a whole nation and continents outside. Maybe he knows it too.

When she tries to close her legs, all she achieves is wrapping them harder around his waist. Her insides boil when his hard, hot body rubs infuriatingly against her, slowly, temptingly. She can feel the warm mound in his pants when he grinds it slowly against her, and for that second, she wishes all his clothes were off and she was sheathing her naked body against his, or at least that his fingers would be within her. But she holds her tongue, blushing and angry with her swollen body, unwilling to ask.

She isn’t some weak woman lusting for comfort or cock. She  _isn’t_. Not like this. But she finds that she can’t move now, can’t seem to fight him for control now with her heavy, clumsy body growing heavier yet.

He tilts his chin to the side, still suckling, and she’s emptying far too quickly. Suddenly, she wishes she had more to offer him. He looks up at her, eyes blank and face relaxed, like his mind is somewhere else too, and a strange, illicit thrill frissons through her. Her cunt is already wet from just this, but he mustn’t know it. She drops her head to his, her elbows on his broad shoulders and her arms still entangled around his neck, just keeping him there, wanting him there, breathing through the last of it. 

Then there’s nothing left, and his mouth pulls away with a pop. His tongue slips out, dripping, and the pink tip traces the edge of his bottom lip. She feels a rush of blood to her cheeks again when he gives her rosy nipples each a soft, reverent kiss. The cool air rushing in makes her pebble, and she’s still tingling but lighter than she’s felt in days. 

He catches her chin and looks up at her, his eyes so dark that the green irises look black. “Just think of when our baby is born.”

When he parts the rest of her robe, exposing her white and shivering lower body to his gaze, she thinks about the marks that were distressingly clearer this morning. She tries not to flinch.

But he doesn’t seem to see or care. He holds apart her thin legs, tapering up to her thighs and the disproportionately swollen belly, and presses his lips to the hollow of her hip. His fingers find her slickness, and too late, she tries to bring her robe back.

“Cagalli.”

Her knees would have knocked together, but his torso keeps her obscenely spread out, like she’s already delivering their child. He hooks her arms around his neck and he snakes his hips between her thighs, ridding her of her nightgown in one swirling movement.

It's so simple like this, to be disrobed but awash with feeling, every point sensitized, waiting for his glans to drag her flesh with him. There were the times when he'd taken his pleasure in other ways, in other places, sometimes so starkly and viciously. During those times, she'd feared that she had damaged him somehow, or that he was being pushed over some edge that she couldn't pull him back from. But then he would often pump her so full of him and kiss her so tenderly that she would lie there, feeling him give himself and love her, and she’d dreamt of a future that they couldn’t seem to grasp. And then they somehow had, and when she'd asked him for a child, foolishly assuming that it would take far longer or something more, he'd obeyed, too easily.

In the end, nothing’s changed, and she’s spread like she always is for him, his fingers stroking into her folds. She’d wielded power over him before, and yet she has so little of it now. She closes her eyes, submitting, sensing each twitch of her cunt and the surrendered relaxation as his digits slip, then plunge between her legs.

Her hands find his hair when he settles to her opening and gives her the first lick. The flat tongue caresses her outer ridge, before swirling circles down into her heat. Her bloodshot insides tense as he tastes her, and his midnight hair brushes the inside of her thighs when he massages her lower lips. By the fourth lick, she’s pulling at him, although her fingers have no energy for force. His thick tongue searches, opening her petals, prodding into her and sliding against her insides. Each low, deliberate scrape makes her breath run short out and her hips lift.

“Please,” she says, her breath heaving, “Oh please…”

Athrun turns his head to the side, tongue slicking from underneath her to trace over her thighs. She arches her head backwards, gasping, hair thickened from pregnancy, tumbling like straw on the sheets. There’s little to no strength left in her hands, and it’s a struggle when she’s unsure whether to pull him nearer, or push him away. Her hips hitch with his every lick, and her waist lurches towards him when he separates, as if to call him back.

Then he lets go suddenly. Her eyes are clamped shut, her cheeks burning, but even so she feels him separate to undo his shirt. There’s a clink of his metal buckle, that small groan easing from him with the unzip. When she peeks, the sight of him makes her cunt convulse. She can’t bear to look for long at his reddened, pulsing length, thicker yet with arousal and beaded with pre-come, but he makes sure that she feels him all the same, hard and hot, nudging torturously, his thickened, excited flesh tracing against her spread lower lips.

His length goes just a little, his fingers holding her open and unfurling her, before sliding in, and the anticipation of being filled so suddenly makes her arch her back. She holds him tightly, arms crossed around his broad shoulders, and sobs quietly, tears spilling. He lets out a soft, hot, breath as he begins to rock back and forth.

With the first penetration, her jaw tightens and her vision seems to implode with starfire. His hot, pulsing length buries thickly in her, forcing her apart slowly, relentlessly, and she arches back and forth, her body somehow accepting every thrust of his hips, every added inch easing within her clenching canal. Her core spasms, and the warmth of his body seems so much more real, more gorgeous than the sun’s heat shining through the open window.

Her voice whines, almost involuntarily, in time to his thrusts, but it breakes when he lurches forward abruptly. He swivels his waist and hips, massaging the head of him inside her, and she can feel her cunt absorb, swallow more, even while her clit throbs with its bundle of nerves against his finger. When the sudden burst of pleasure explodes into her, her breaths boil up in her throat. It might make her cry. Her belly trembles, juddering like a bag of water with every movement.

Then he shifts. He hooks a hand under her thigh and lifts it above his shoulder. She’s heavy, flat on her side now, staring at the automaton frozen senselessly at the other side, the sunlight spilling beyond the window.

He pulls back enough to make her wince, but he leaves enough of his swollen shaft for her to feel him still embedded by his tip, and then he thrusts forward to sheathe himself into her. There’s only that feeling of fullness now, with nothing but the heated friction of his cock kissing and nudging her insides, and his slow, soft presses against her neck. Her body is weeping its honey, warm and slick with sweat as he sets his body within hers, edging inside and dragging out as her heart swells and soars.

"Stay like this." he whispers into her ear, and she lies on her side, knowing every tremor that shakes into his form. "Stay with me.”

She can feel the hard muscles of his abdomen tense, and his closeness makes her heart race, after being alone so long. Her cunt responds to him like it remembers, tightening momentarily with each intrusion, then softening for the next thrust. Her mouth is drooling, her nipples damp and sticky under the soft pads of his fingers. Every time he touches them, rolling her flesh in his fingers and palms, her insides wrench and twist with pleasure. Her mind is a chasm, and all she can do is cling to him tightly, swept along by the current.

"Cagalli." The simple way he produces her name from his throat and lips makes her ache. Ca-ga-lli.

It's enough to make her submit the last of herself to the ageless rhythm, filled with him as much as he consumes, their bodies burning up. It's base, primal, their hands locked together, each point of contact fastening them to the coupling. When he moves against her in time with his thrusts, she feels his biceps tightening, waist as hard as stone with his arms holding her thighs apart. His unbuttoned white shirt flaps like wings against them, the drops of sweat rolling and dripping down the taut muscles of his chest and stomach. Her leg quivers over his broad shoulder as he quickens his pace, pulling shards of pleasure from her.

She sees it all, like it’s the first time. Those eyes like the forests and seas, his head bent and soft hair coming loose to his ridged collarbone. His exposed shoulders, the shirt falling off, the twisted branches of the scars on his body. The way his mouth pulls and his lip trembles when he climaxes, the dip in his hipbone as he thrusts himself so deep inside her that her body might have burned embers.

He shudders and his seed is so warm, pouring into her. It’s strange, ignoring that instinctive, primitive alarm at the feeling of it pushing so deep within her and her body somehow milking each dredge of him. His trembling, groaning body can't possibly fill her anymore than she already is, not when it’s already taken root so much that he grows from inside out of her. 

When he kisses her in one blazing, dominating movement, she feels another quiet sob heave from her. Joy, fear, love, pain, lust and wonder, in this nursery, like this. His sex in her pregnant body, sex in a room meant for a baby. She lies with him, feels him breathe, feels him seep, slick and thick down her thighs when their bodies must eventually separate. He smells of cedar and cologne, of sweat, come and her milk, the musky bittersweetness of their bodies.

If only she had chosen this all along, and earlier. Maybe, their years of suffering could have ended if she'd surrendered earlier, opened to him completely and let him cleave the sphere of her life, divide it up to carve himself and their creation into it. Maybe it had been bound to happen. She had wanted it, and she had spent so long denying it.

“Don’t leave me. Promise?”

He looks at her, eyes fierce, unwavering. His hand, still entwined in hers, tightens. “I promise.”

X

They go swimming in the low tide, as he’d promised. It’s closer to treading water than swimming, because she clings to him like she’s in the ocean of a dream. He tangles her into him as they rest, cool against a flat rock, half-covered with the waves washing lazily, sinuous on them. The sun beats down, strong and sharp, but in this alcove, the palms’ shadows soften their bareness.

“I shouldn’t have let you come here alone.” he says. “It was a mistake.”

“I liked it.” She traces his jaw sleepily. “I wanted a break from everything in Orb. I was getting tired.”

He’s quiet for a long time, thinking. But then she feels him sigh, and somehow, his smile heals her when she looks at him. Like any good medicine, it’s a tad bitter too. 

He sounds so hesitant. “I was afraid that you’d be a better parent than me. I thought about it a lot, when I was with you. But I promise - I’ll do everything I can to keep up with you.”

In the water, her body is as light as his, buoyant for as long as they stay. It’s the one place where they’re weightless, and she’s so safe that she could simply close her eyes, taking it all in. Their child stirs again, kicking.

He must feel it too, because he touches her belly in the water, brushes his salty lips against her forehead, and croons her name.

X

**Author's Note:**

> This was so hard to write. I’d love to hear from you.


End file.
